South Vietnam National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes suspected Viet Cong member Nguyen Van Lem, on the second day of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.

On 31 January 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a large-scale offensive attacking most major cities in South Vietnam simultaneously. The attacks came as a complete surprise for both the South Vietnamese Army and the American Army, as the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday of Tet had just begun, and a ceasefire had been announced for the duration of the holiday. Within a day, the streets of Saigon, a presumed safe hold, had turned into a battlefield. It would take the South Vietnamese Army and the American forces two weeks to regain control of the city.